ok Possession of the Sea in the Name of Castile
and Leon"]

Somehow the dramatic quality of that supreme moment in the life of
Balboa has impressed itself upon the minds of the successive
generations that have read of it since that day. It stands as one of
the great episodes of history. That little band of ragged,
weather-beaten, hard-bitten soldiers, under the leadership of the most
lovable and gallant of the Spaniards of his time, on that lonely
mountain peak rising above the almost limitless sea of trackless
verdure, gazing upon the great ocean whose waters extended before them
for thousands and thousands of miles, attracts the attention and fires
the imagination.

Your truly great man may disguise his imaginative qualities from the
unthinking public eye, but his greatness is in proportion to his
imagination. Balboa, with the centuries behind him, shading his eye
and staring at the water:

----Dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
Saw the visions of the world, and all the wonder that would be.

He saw Peru with its riches; he saw fabled Cathay; he saw the uttermost
isles of the distant sea. His imagination took the wings of the
morning and soared over worlds and countries that no one but he had
ever dreamed of, all to be the fiefs of the King of Castile. It is
interesting to note that it must have been to Balboa, of all men, that
some adequate idea of the real size of the earth first came.

{41}

Well, they gazed their fill; then, with much toil, they cut down trees,
dragged them to the top of the mountain and erected a huge cross which
they stayed by piles of stones. Then they went down the mountain-side
and sought the beach. It was no easy task to find it, either. It was
not until some days had passed that one of the several parties broke
through the jungle and stood upon the shore. When they were all
assembled, the tide was at low ebb. A long space of muddy beach lay
between them and the water. They sat down under the trees and waited
until the tide was at flood, and then, on the 29th of September, with a
banner displaying the Virgin and Child above the arms of Spain in one
hand and with drawn sword in the other, Balboa marched solemnly into
the rolling surf that broke about his waist and took formal possession
of the ocean, and all the shores, wheresoever they might be, which were
washed by its waters, for Ferdinand of Aragon, and his daughter Joanna
of Castile, and their succe